Ang Lee Quotes

We're hoping for the best, but we need to prepare for the worst.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on 'AI,' and his level of preparation was extraordinary. He told me there was a time at the beginning when he was a bit more spontaneous and went over budget, and it absolutely wrecked his head. When you look at the power and assuredness of his movies, it makes sense that he works out so much in advance.

You can’t prepare for the best case; you have to prepare for the worst case.

Then you realize that the preparation and the planning of this small army of people trying to head to the single aim of creating a work that's going to excite people is very risky. Of course, the odds are that it's not going to work out because there are too many possibilities of it going wrong.

Making a movie is a weird combination of planning and the absolutely unexpected.

It doesn't always happen according to the way you have planned things out but I feel if you have covered most of the aspects, it does help out there in the middle.

The film business has so many twists and turns that it's a miracle any film gets made.

Every movie is like a little company, and any little thing can make it not work.

To prepare for a disaster, practice the worst case scenario. We don’t usually do that.

I know nothing about making a movie.

I really believe in hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

Everything is always against you when making a movie, and if you don't have a solid blueprint that the entire team can get behind and understand and then execute, then you're going to be lost on the set.

Interestingly enough, the storyboard... that I did for 'Psycho' went precisely as I laid it up, and there was no change on that. And frankly, I myself at that point didn't even really understand the impact that some of these things would have.

No matter how much you plan and prepare, things can still go wrong.

You never have any idea where your movie's going to go when you're shooting - you're in this little bubble.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

Go make yourself a plan And be a shining light. Then make yourself a second plan, For neither will come right.

I never really feel like I'm sure a film's gonna happen until I'm maybe halfway through.

It pays to be prepared.

There's nothing worse than shooting a scene you haven't rehearsed.

We must prepare for everything.

When you start on a new film, no matter how many you've done before that, I think I've done close to 80 films, but it's always kind of a fun adventure.

There's nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke's famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary - a kind of ‘Titanic' plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).

At times, there are misunderstandings [during shooting]. Especially with green screen and not really knowing what it is that you're looking at, you really depend on the director to create that world for you.

Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man.